Introduction
Good
morning, my friends. This is the point where the reader always
stands to welcome people to the Cathedral and to remind them to silence
their cell phones. We can skip that this morning for obvious
reasons, but I would like to say as we begin that I really long to be
able to look at you directly this morning and say to you, as I give you
the consecrated host, ‘the Body of Christ.’ But I can still say
that to you and mean it because , even though you are temporarily
deprived of receiving the Sacrament of Christ’s Body and Blood in the
Eucharist, you - we - are the Body of Christ, and no matter how
physically separated we may be at this time, we are together in that
Body, one in Christ, one with each other!
Homily
One of the lesser-known works of the great American playwright,
Eugene O'Neill, is a play called Lazarus Laughed. It tells the
story of the good friend of Jesus who briefly tasted death and saw it
for what it was. Ever after, Lazarus greets everyone he meets with words
that become something of a refrain throughout the play, these words:
Laugh
with me!/ Death is dead!/ Fear is no more!
There is only life!/ There is only laughter!
The stage directions that follow indicate that (and here I quote)
Lazarus "begins to laugh, softly at first, then full-throated - a laugh
so full of joy in living, so devoid of all fear, that it is infectious
with love."
I like the image of the laughing Lazarus. I like it especially at
this scary time when we seem to have little or nothing to laugh about.
But maybe it will be helpful to remember that the laughter of Lazarus
was preceded by tears. His own, I would think - when he knew he was
irreversibly in the grip of death - and certainly the tears of Martha
and Mary, his loving sisters who doted on him, and who were devastated
by his untimely death. And then there were the tears of Jesus. In what
is surely the shortest but also one of the most revealing sentences in
all the gospels, we are simply told that "Jesus wept."
Laughter and tears. Tears and laughter. They are like waves that
constantly wash up onto the shores of life. And they are never very far
apart, are they? Certainly not in today's readings, and certainly
not in life as we know it, although in these days of the Coronavirus,
there are definitely more tears than laughter. But the truth is that
tears and laughter are as constant and as predictable as death and life.
They give life and death a voice.
My ministry as a priest over many years has brought me close to the
tears and laughter of a lot of people. To tell you the truth, it's an
awesome thing, a humbling thing, and sometimes a terrifying thing to be
that close to the agony and the ecstasy of another human being. It’s
something I never take lightly.
Till the day I die, I will remember keeping vigil – many years ago -
with a young wife and mother at the bedside of her dying husband. He was
way too young to be dying, but Agent Orange from the Vietnam War and the
resultant leukemia were having their way. We watched life slowly but
steadily drain from him as, through our tears, we prayed the Church's
prayers for the dying. He died one morning just after sunrise and before
sunset that same day, his wife gave birth to their second child, a
beautiful baby girl. Tears and laughter can come very close together in
this mysterious life of ours, but I never saw them come any closer than
that. I found myself standing in silent wonder before the mystery of a
God for whom life and death are intricately woven together and sometimes
even spoken in the same breath.
But we must not be too literal about life and death. Death has more
than one meaning and so does life. The scriptures tell us that the story
of the raising of Lazarus is more than a great miracle story that showed
beyond any doubt that Jesus had power over death. It certainly did that,
but it did even more because in John's Gospel the miracles of Jesus are
more than wonders: they are signs, signs of something far deeper than
physical. They are spiritual signs, signs of faith. Think of them as
sacraments that point beyond themselves. In last Sunday's Gospel when
Jesus gave sight to the man born blind, his eyes began to see people and
trees and colors, yes, but he gained other eyes, too. He gained the eyes
of faith that allowed him to see Jesus as Lord. "I do believe, Lord," he
said, as he fell down in worship. And it was the same in the story of
the Samaritan woman. The water from Jacob's Well not only quenched her
thirst, it led her to an encounter with Jesus, the living water.
So what is the deeper level of the story of Lazarus? I see it
as a story, not just about the raising of the brother of Martha and Mary
but the raising of every Christian believer, including you and me.
Lazarus represents Christians on their way to faith and he also
represents Christians struggling to believe and sometimes finding it
hard to believe.
Each one of us should be able to identify with Lazarus. Like him, we
are the friends of Jesus, and we are also the ones for whom Jesus weeps,
and the ones to whom he speaks those commanding words, "Lazarus, come
forth!" That’s because there is something dead in each of us
waiting to be brought back to life; there’s something asleep in each of
us, longing to be awakened. The Lazarus story is our story, then - the
story of every believer and of everyone striving to believe. And it’s
the story of those in our community who are preparing for Baptism. They
have heard the words of Jesus, "Lazarus, come forth," and they are
shaking off their shrouds and winding sheets, eager to walk in freedom
and in the light of day.
My friends, we all have tears in our lives. That’s especially true
during these days of the Corona virus, but it’s true every day because
we all have hurts that won't go away: painful memories that haunt us,
limitations we can't overcome, things that just don't make sense to us,
things that bring us to tears. And we all have death to deal with, too:
the death of a loved one, or our own death, or maybe our fear of death.
And at this particular moment we are painfully aware of the deaths of
thousands around the world – many right here in our own area – because
of the terrible pandemic.
But death is not the whole story. There is Lazarus and his story
which we need to hear. We really do. With Lazarus, we need to hear Jesus
say, "Come forth!", and then we need to take our first uncertain steps
into the light of day. And, you know, that takes courage because we can
actually be comfortable in our graves. We can get used to drowning in
our tears.
But my friends, as much as tears are a part of our lives, we are
still meant to laugh. Along with Lazarus, we are meant to leave our
tombs and to laugh. To laugh because, in the end, there really is
only life. And God’s enduring love!
Father Michael G. Ryan
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